Gaming Narrative and Go in Israel

Gaming Narrative section

Attack of Opportunity talks about the lack of narrative in online RPGs, and his suggestions sound suspiciously to me like turning RPG games into Eurogames. Lucky for him there is a new book called Game Writing: Narrative Skill for Videogames. And while we're on the subject, The Play Ethic talks about emotional narrative in video games.



Israeli Go section

The Jerusalem Go club now meets twice a month in a new location.

Place: Bein Aza Le'Berlin is a choumous place on Shlomtzion Street, 100m down the street from "Daila". The address is : Shlomtzion 12, corner of Ben Sira.

Time: 18:30 first and third MONDAY of the month. Next Mon, 17 July, and then August 7 and 21. If they get enough response they will consider weekly.

And speaking of Go, the following ad appeared in Janglo today:

Learn to play GO and be a winner! Fun, GO boards and green tea are guaranteed!!

Private GO lessons in English, Russian and Hebrew, to all ages in Merkaz HaIr (one-to-one), Ramot (groups) or in your place.

One-to-one lessons cost 80 s.h. and 3-5 participant group session cost 50 s.h. per student. 7+ participants lessons cost 30 s.h. per student.

Call Sensay David at 052 569-4559 (English) or e-mail at chassida@yahoo.com to set up your FREE introductory lesson.

Personal Section

I took a day off from work today to do a number of things: try to get a network set up in my house (which didn't work), discuss retirement and insurance with an agent, go to the dentist, and visit my parents.

Tonight was game night, and the session report will be up tomorrow, hopefully, including first impressions of New England.

Someone offered to trade me Santiago for Goa, which I was happy to accept, seeing as I never really warmed to Goa, and I am passionate about Santiago. To exchange, I had to get Goa back from the Tel Aviv group, and while we were doing that, the TA group got back from me Amun-Re for which they had also received a trade offer for.

That hurts, as Amun-Re was a standby in our group. We may just have to buy it. While I was sending games back to the TA group, I sent along three other games we had borrowed from them but never play: Evo, Oasis, and Attika.

Someone is translating my first Ethics in Gaming article into Latvian, for inclusion on a website.

USA Today complains about the new Ultimate Board Game Collection, in that the games aren't any fun without real opponents. I could have told them that. The point of silly board games is companionship, since the games themselves aren't worth anything.

I also have to add that I'm impressed at how well Binyamin from my game group is doing with his game teaching in Beit El. He is running classes for kids of many ages every day of the week. In school, after school, and full games days. And he is getting great attendance, and the kids love it. An entire generation of kids are being turned on by his efforts. Kol Hakavod, Benny.

Yehuda